A Trillion Good Reasons to Keep the Estate Taxby Mike Lapham
www.dissidentvoice.org
April 7, 2006

My
grandparents and great-grandparents paid the estate tax when they passed
along the family business. Some decade soon, my own parents will.

With hundreds of thousands, perhaps
millions, of dollars to gain, I should be cheering for the proposal coming
before the Senate in May to do away with the estate tax, which applies
only to multimillion dollar inheritances.

Instead, Iím organizing wealthy members of
Responsible
Wealth to oppose repeal of the estate tax. As multi-millionaires, we
have benefited handsomely from all that our country provides: public
education, roads, clean water, legal protection, research funding and
public safety, just for starters.

One Responsible Wealth member, Martin
Rothenberg, grew up using the public library, went to school on the GI
Bill, received a government fellowship, and built a $30 million software
company using publicly-funded research and publicly-educated employees. ďI
hope the taxes on my estate will help fund the kind of programs that
benefited me and others from humble backgrounds,Ē he says.

Given the choice to be taxed or not, we all
tend to choose not. Thatís just human nature. But we have to look at the
wider implications of what we ask our elected officials to do for us.

In 2001, when Congress voted to phase out
and repeal the estate tax, the federal treasury was expecting a $5
trillion surplus. Times have changed, however. Now thereís over $8
trillion in federal debt.

There are a trillion good reasons to retain
the estate tax in the years to come. Permanently abolishing the estate tax
would cost almost $1 trillion in the first ten years.

I believe our country has higher priorities
for $1 trillion than giving families like mine a huge tax break.

Besides our existing $8 trillion debt,
consider some of the additional expenditures coming down the pike.

The Iraq War will continue to be costly in
both human lives and money. Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz
and his coauthor Linda Bilmes estimate a total budgetary cost of between
$750 billion and $1.27 trillion.

In late 2003, Congress passed an expansion
of the Medicare prescription drug benefit. The Center for Medicare and
Medical Services projects a ten-year cost of $797 billion.

Congressional leaders have pledged to
abolish the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) for individuals, especially as
an estimated 30 million taxpayers will pay the AMT by 2010. Eliminating
the AMT will reduce federal revenues by $611 to $790 billion over ten
years.

The Republican leadership in Congress would
like to extend the tax cuts they passed in 2001 and 2003. The cost of this
extension would be $1 trillion in lost revenue over ten years.

Estate tax repeal, combined with these other
expenditures, would balloon our national debt in the coming decade. With
lighter and lighter taxation of wealthy asset-owners like my family each
year, more tax dollars would come out of the pockets of working Americans.
In this context, considering estate tax repeal is fiscally and morally
irresponsible.

A new poll shows that most Americans agree.
Voters chose keeping the estate tax as one of the two best ways to reduce
the budget deficit. Almost three-quarters support reforming the tax or
leaving it intact rather than repealing it.

In a society where the economic rules are
strongly tilted in favor of the haves at the expense of the have-nots,
where tax laws give generous loopholes to the wealthiest among us, the
occasion of passing on wealth to the next generation is an appropriate
time to tax our accumulated fortunes. Most of the appreciated value of
these assets has never been taxed.

The choice is whether to remove a tax on
estates of more than $3.5 million, affecting only the 6,000 wealthiest
individuals who die each year. Responsible Wealth members believe that a
fair tax system, fiscal responsibility, and priorities like healthcare and
education are better choices than lining the pockets of our progeny.

I could be sitting back hoping my parentsí
estate wonít be subject to the estate tax. Instead, Iím hoping the
majority of U.S. Senators understand what many of them donít: that we in
the richest one percent can and should pay this very fair tax, as an
appropriate way for us to give back and create opportunities for others.